Universities Have Toed The Line On Cost Sharing

Abstract

Increasing pressure on universities to pay more of the indirect costs of doing research—costs that have held steady for the past decade—would be detrimental to the research enterprise, according to an analysis of university cost sharing on federal grants released last week by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). The analysis of facilities and administrative (F&A) costs—also known as indirect costs—further indicates that increasing the share of costs borne by universities could force administrators to reduce spending for research and education or to raise tuition. The analysis was conducted by OSTP and RAND, a nonprofit research institution based in Santa Monica, Calif. By wording and implication, the report is clearly meant to stave off possible congressionally mandated reductions in indirect cost funds that accompany research grants to academic investigators. In the past, the cost-sharing issue has brought controversy and scandal to the university research community. A lack of ...